I thought that I was going to sit down and write an essay about modification and focus on the impact that genital modification has had on my life. Instead, a blank document stared back at me for some time until I was nearly ready to close the word processor in disgust and maybe try again later, as I had said so many times before. For something that played such a profound role in my life and was once a consuming, immediate need, it's awfully ironic that I couldn't type a single intelligible word about it. This inability to write, I realized in a moment of sudden understanding, probably has a lot to do with how I've felt about my genital piercings lately.
At A Glance Author Dawn Contact [email protected] IAM dragon When N/A Artist various Studio various Location Indiana Shortly after my eighteenth birthday, I chose a vertical hood piercing to follow my navel piercing a month or so prior. The compulsion to get this piercing is inexplicable to me in hindsight, although at the time, I felt confident about the decision. While, I had found BME and read extensively about the proper procedures, I was far from confident enough to contradict the piercer when he suggested a short, sixteen gauge curved barbell for the initial jewelry. The healing was flawless and I was extremely satisfied with the work, however. I was very nervous about doing so but I ventured to change my own jewelry after a month or so. I was utterly delighted and pleasantly surprised that it went so easily and I felt incredibly empowered. This set a precedent that was to become a two-year journey of stretching and additional genital piercings.
I felt such significant sexual freedom and erotic passion in every facet of my life. The transformation from the unloved and repressed girl that I had been to the fearlessly indulgent and deviant woman that I was becoming left me drunk on the idea that my fantasies could become reality. Other piercings, including my nipples would follow, but none were prized so dearly as the genital work, nor would any others affect me so greatly as those.
With a fair amount of trepidation and a lot of horror stories in mind, I set out to get a horizontal clitoris piercing, roughly eleven months after the hood piercing. I was alone in the piercing room, with no feminine hand pressed into mine, as I felt the intense flash of pain that is in every way inexplicable. This emptiness beside me was indicative of the relationship choices that I had made and accepted, and while I lamented the lack of this hand, I felt great joy in independence and further transformation.
In the months to follow, I experimented with different types of jewelry, seeking to perfect a balance of comfort and sensation, but always I pressed the piercings into bigger gauges. It was a difficult process, complicated enough to be deserving of a tale all its own. Often, I wore short, stainless steel tapers in both clit and hood piercings with black o-rings on them, stretching tiny amounts over the period of weeks after long, hot showers.
A bit of drinking during a night at a friend's house a couple of hours away began the end of my stretched hood piercing. Although it had been at a comfortable four gauge, the jewelry fell out accidentally after a shower the morning before I left and it managed to close down quickly over the course of the day. While I found the jewelry on the bathroom floor and realized what I had happened that evening, I had no other jewelry to even begin getting the jewelry back in. I returned home, driving without anything at all in, and was only being able to get a fourteen gauge barbell back in comfortably. I had stretched very carefully and slowly so the tissue was incredibly soft and elastic still, adding to its ability to close down quickly that day. In the next couple of weeks, I placed a ten gauge barbell in the piercing and it remains there to this day.
The clitoris piercing was still in the process of being stretched because the tissue was tighter and slower to stretch. I pushed it until I was able to wear a small tunnel though the piercing that had been done at fourteen gauge. I adored these piercings and cleaned the jewelry carefully each day, treasuring the knowledge of my most personal modifications.
A year and half or so later, I decided with some encouragement that I would like to have two pairs of outer labia piercings. My hesitation about the piercings had to do with my hair preferences and needing to work around the jewelry during the healing phase. My personal aesthetics continue to play a significant role in my overall sexual desires to this day so this was not an inconsequential matter. The right labium presented me with few problems but the left labium was quite honestly one of the most shocking and painful things that I have ever done in my life. The pain was not comparable as even the same type of pain that I experienced with my clitoris piercing. That hand that I had missed during the second genital piercing experience returned and was with me through the session of all four piercings.
The healing went easily enough but I felt that once the swelling had decreased enough, the extra long barbells were a hindrance to full healing, so I went back to the shop to get four shorter ones, all in the original fourteen gauge. The jewelry change happened easily enough but I had also decided to stretch my clitoris piercing from the tunnel to a gauge larger CBR. The CBR was massive and beyond my abilities to insert the bead so I felt it a simple enough procedure to add onto the other jewelry changes being done. When the taper went through the piercing, I was shocked and dismayed to feel like it was being pierced anew. Something felt so very wrong. My body was screaming danger at me and while the taper was through and the jewelry only needed to be followed through, I insisted that I downsize immediately. I had a small ten gauge CBR, purchased weeks earlier as septum jewelry but the delicate by comparison jewelry replaced my tunnel that very painful day and has not been changed since.
Several months later, during sex, a barbell caught on a chain and pulled through one of the labia piercings, barbell balls and all. I felt pain, but didn't investigate until morning given the other activities taking place, when the barbell was not to be found and the piercing had closed up entirely. I mourned the loss of this symmetry a great deal and was terribly upset because it had been on the painful left labium. It has not been re-pierced yet, even 8 months later. I spoke to another piercer about potentially re-doing the piercing, while the piercer easily stretched the other piercings to twelve gauge, but have not acted on my desire to do so yet.
Reflecting on this history of events gives me a great deal of insight about why I was having such trouble writing about my genital modifications. I feel intense disappointment and asymmetrical disgust about piercings that I have currently. They are still there but they no longer bring me any joy. No longer do I feel sexual like a sexual creature or confident about receiving oral sex. The sexual component to life is a vital one for many people and I am no exception. Without this confidence, I lack significant parts of whom I want and need to be. The physical part of the relationship that I have chosen to be in has suffered as a result of my frustration with genital modification.
I have learned that my relationship with the sexual parts of my body is not static and must continually evolve. So many stories have been written by women who have reclaimed their bodies through piercing and other modification; I hope the next story that I can write is about the restoration of my sexual life through the improvement of existing genital piercings.